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HELP - can't boot into OSX - can I restore my data from debianppc?



Hi folks

I'm running a tiBook with OSX 10.2.3 and debianppc.  My OSX install crashed
a couple of days ago (not sure why), and none of the disk repair options
(fsck, disk utility) are able to repair them.  So I have a couple of
questions as to how I might be able to use debianppc in repairing things.

First, a description of the problem:

I was initially able to boot into OSX, but noticed that it was not showing
the right stats on my hard drive.  It showed almost all the space available,
but all of my files / apps were still there.  When I ran fsck (to disk
utility) IT would end with "checking category table..... hash table full".
At his point, when yaboot starts to boot into OSX, there is a brief screen
flash, and I am back at the yaboot prompt.  I can't boot into safe or single
user mode under OSX.

Before wiping my entire system, I would like to try to get my data back.
Here are my 2 thoughts so far:

1. Find another mac user, and boot up my tibook as a firewire slave (by
holding down "t" during boot").  See if I can mount my drive from the other
computer, backup, and reinstall everything.

2. Mount the drive from debian, copy all crucial data over into a big tar.gz
file, then reinstall OSX.  This is where I need help - I vaguely recall a
tool being available to mount my osx drive (which is HFS+).  Can anyone
advise me as to which packages I need to install to do this, and whether
this method would allow me to safely copy data (without bad side effects due
to the 2 different filesystem types)?

Finally, once I try the above (successfully or not), can I reinstall OSX
onto the previous partition without munging my current debian install?  Or
will I need to reinstall that as well.  I would assume things should be OK,
but recall some potential issues with the OSX installer overwriting
bootstrap partitions, etc.

Any help ot additional tips on recovering my data greatly appreciated...

thanks

Jim M



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